3 Things Trajan Langdon will do differently for the Detroit Pistons

Trajan Langdon is officially Detroit’s new President of Basketball Operations, and he immediately has a laundry list of things to do. Clearly, Langdon was not afraid of the current House on Fire status of Detroit’s franchise, but he will have his work cut out for him. Could his previous body of work give us any indication on how he plans on running Detroit?

Throughout his time with Brooklyn and New Orleans there were a few constants in management. Let’s take a look at them. 

Trajan Langdon utilizes the G-League

One thing that Detroit truly has never done, outside a few guys this past season, is using their G-League team the Motor City Cruise. That is likely to change with Trajan Langdon at the helm as POBO.

During his time with Brooklyn and New Orleans, Langdon was constantly assigning and recalling members from their G-League. Whether it was to give their rotational players the night off, or to offset injuries, guys like Chris McCullough, Isaiah Whitehead, Trey Murphy III, and Jaxon Hayes were all platooned. This obviously gave Trey Murphy and, to a lesser extent, Jaxon Hayes, time to develop. Murphy is now a legit star and you can likely point to his time in the G-League developing as a major factor.

As mentioned, Detroit was forced to use the G-League more so this past year thanks to injury, but I expect Langdon and Detroit to make it more of a regular thing.  

Two, three, and four-way trades may be coming to the Detroit Pistons

Fans are begging Detroit to get involved in some trades to save this failed rebuild, and rightfully so. But something that Trajan Langdon has done a number of times, is orchestrate or, at the very least, be involved in, multi-team trades.

While with the Nets and Pelicans, Langdon was involved in around 27 trades. While some were smaller, we’ll get to that in a minute, some were large, franchise shaking trades. Some names that were either shipped out or acquired under Langdon’s watch included Anthony Davis, Kyle Kuzma, Bojan Bogdanovic, Lonzo Ball, De’Andre Hunter, Josh Hart, Brandon Ingram, Jrue Holiday, Jonas Valuncunis, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Trey Murphy, Devonte Graham, and Steven Adams. 

Of those trades, three were either three or even four team, larger trades. This is definitely something that Detroit can, and should, do this offseason. The Pistons can easily slide in as the third team in a deal thanks to their $65 million in cap space. Whether they are sneaking in to collect draft capital or actually getting an expensive star, Langdon should continue his trend and get involved in any three-way/four-way trade he can. 

Trajan Langdon orchestrates smaller trade packages to acquire 2nd-round draft picks

As just mentioned, Langdon is no stranger to making deals to change the landscape of a franchise. In fact, that’s reported as a major reason he wound up winning the job over Dennis Lindsey (Subscription). With that being said, something he also has done quite a bit is orchestrating smaller trades that net his team second round draft picks.

This is obviously in complete contrast to how Troy Weaver has operated. Year after year, Weaver has shipped second round draft picks out like they are candy, usually to take a flier on a reclamation project. Clearly this hasn’t really worked, just ask James Wiseman, Marvin Bagley, or Josh Jackson. Instead, Langdon works each year to collect these picks, either to include them in his larger deals to sweeten the pot, or to actually use on hidden gems such as Herb Jones.

Trajan Langdon is going to do things differently for the Detroit Pistons, which will hopefully yield different results.